


How Do I Breathe Without You

by auntieshakespeare



Series: The lovers, the dreamers, and me [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Character Study, Chronic Illness, Fluff and Angst, High School, I'm Bad At Tagging, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 09:24:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17547005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auntieshakespeare/pseuds/auntieshakespeare
Summary: Shiro is fading and Adam is breathless.





	How Do I Breathe Without You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [minnowlet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minnowlet/gifts).



> I SWEAR TO GOD one day I'm gonna write something happy and something Sheith related. ONE. DAY.
> 
> Yet another prequel to canon from minnowlet and my Voltron AU. All you need to know is that Adam and Shiro grew up together and Adam has two moms, Hannah and Deborah.
> 
> Title from the Leann Rimes song "How Do I Live" because my body is comprised of about 7% 90s country music.

Ten unread text messages and an hour of silence later, Adam is starting to feel suffocated by Takashi's conspicuous absence. Maybe it's his anxiety or his obsessive compulsive disorder. Maybe it's his relentless drive to know as much as he can in the time he has. Maybe it's memories of long class periods staring at his boyfriend's empty desk, knowing that Takashi was stuck in a hospital bed feeling alone and unloved. Whatever the reason, it's making Adam woozy with breathlessness and more irritable than usual. Every movement, every noise has him on edge.

He's halfway through an extremely unproductive debate practice, trying to finalize the entry list for the Evansville competition coming up, but every time he tries to focus on the form--

_Snap._

Wet mouth sounds fill the silence made by the breaths he can't find.

_Snap._

It shouldn't be possible to chew gum that loudly, even in a quiet library but--

_Snap._

If Liebgott snaps his gum one more time Adam is going to yank it out of his mouth and shove it in his eye and no one is gonna stop him. One of the perks of being the debate team captain is that the underclassmen are all terrified of him and the upperclassmen are all aware of just how much work his position entails, meaning that they have no interest in taking over should someone start a coup over his occasional control freak tendencies. Besides, Shaaban seems just as annoyed with the noise as him and as his lieutenant captain, her opinion is the only one that matters.

"Liebgott, cut it out," she snaps, mere seconds before Adam's own patience runs dry. Said nuisance opens his mouth to protest but Adam cuts him off.

"If you don't spit that gum out right now I'm gonna ban all food from practices until sectionals, unless absolutely necessary for health reasons. And don't give me the 'gum helps me focus' excuse," he adds as Liebgott's useless maw opens _again_ to try and blather nonsense directly to Adam's face, "because you've been doing a crossword this entire time and I know you haven't finished your rebuttal yet."

"Sixteen across is 'arctangent' by the way," Shaaban adds, smoothing a wrinkle out of her hijab. 

Liebgott flushes red and hurriedly pens down the answer before shoving the newspaper into his backpack, but Adam is done caring about his wayward teammates and is instead craning his neck to try and find his boyfriend across the library. The speech and debate teams have practice on the same day, at the same time and usually it's easy to spot Takashi--big, broad bright spot of sunshine that he is--from any given point in the room. Today he's nowhere to be found and it's been all he's been able think about since practice started.

He longs to wander over to the other side of the library, where the ever noisy speech team appears to be goofing off rather than practicing, but there are twelve teenagers watching him with hawk-sharp eyes, waiting for a signal that they can begin to slack off. The minute he leaves this table he'll have lost them. Anarchy will reign supreme and the months he's spent whipping these kids into top form debaters will be all for naught because--

"Just get up, Weiss."

Shaaban's voice cuts through his catastrophizing with the same caustic tone that won her the position of lieutenant captain. She's small, with kind eyes and a sweet smile, but she can cut through Adam's bullshit and knock him out of an anxiety spiral like she's the size of an orc and twice as mean. 

"He's not here, Adam--you'd have heard him by now if he was. Just have mercy on the babies and call an end to practice so you can go look for Star Man and the rest of us can stop feeling like you're gonna breathe literal fire if we ask you a question."

"Technically practice runs until 4:30 and it's only--"

"Um, Adam?" Liebgott's hesitant voice intones. 

" _Yes Jacob_ what do you nee--" Adam whips his head towards his pet nuisance, only to find him looking at Adam with concern, finger pointing towards the library doors. Standing in the doorway, pink hair half up in a frizzy bun, is Hannah, the set of her mouth familiar in the way that she only holds it just so when the safety of their family is at stake. Scared, but determined. Vulnerable and furious about it.

The fizzy pool of anxiety that has been bubbling in Adam's stomach since Takashi failed to show up for practice has turned into a bottomless pit, infinitely deep and roiling in despair. His lungs deflate, possibly vacate his body entirely. It's hard to say--he hasn't taken a breath in an hour.

"Mom?"

Her slender hands begin to shake. His stomach clenches as he rises from the table and all but dashes into his mother's arms.

"Adam, love. It's Takashi." 

He hangs onto the moment, every sensation painfully sharp in its clarity. He wants to be aware, he _needs_ to be aware of every detail. Hannah holds his face in her hands, stroking his cheeks softly, slow practiced movements meant to settle him. He braces himself for the news.

"Sweetheart Takashi collapsed today. The school nurse called me after she called for an ambulance."

"Why didn't anyone come get me?" Anger is coursing through his body, easier to digest than fear. Anger he can be productive with. He yanks himself out of her grip, expecting shock or chastisement. Instead she looks entirely unsurprised, brow more sympathetic than anything. His rage only grows, as does a tightness in his chest that threatens to knock him unconscious. 

(Distantly he notes that Liebgott and Shaaban are ushering the rest of their team across the library, out the other set of double doors and out of ear shot.)

"He collapsed after 7th period, just before release."

"So the day was over! You should have told me!"

"Baby, you once came to school with strep throat so you wouldn't miss debate. When your mother dragged you home because your fever got so high you started hallucinating, you had a panic attack because you were certain the team would dissolve without your guidance." Hannah's voice is soft, non-judgemental. "Besides, when they couldn't get a hold of Hiroshi, I told them I was going to ride with him in the ambulance. I had to catch a taxi back to the school."

All the anger flushes out of his body in one wet, chest cracking sob. It makes sense and he's glad Takashi wasn't alone, but he hates that his very nature created the circumstance in which Adam's mother felt more suited to accompany his boyfriend to the hospital than him. 

A small, dark hand falls softly on his shoulder. Shaaban stands behind him holding his now-packed backpack loaded down with textbooks, easily a third of her body weight. "Go take care of your boy." 

"Thank you, Needa," Hannah answers with all the grace and patience Adam can't provide. 

He wipes his face and clears the mucus from his throat, slings the bag over his shoulders, and grabs his mother's hand, marching them both out the door, calling out from over his shoulder as he goes, "If I'm not back on Thursday, look over their outlines and critique! And for the love of all that's holy, Liebgott you better have something for Shaaban to look at!" 

He has no plans on returning until Takashi does, but the look of fear in Liebgott's eyes settles Adam just enough that he no longer feels like he's suffocating, merely drowning and occasionally catching gasps of air.

***

From the day they met, Adam knew Takashi was on borrowed time. Twelve years old and all of 95 pounds, Takashi reminded Adam of the boy from _The Secret Garden_ , skin sallow and eyes sunken in, muscles weak and shaky, prone to spasms, future entirely unknowable and utterly incapable of being rational about anything.

 _"What do you mean you're gonna fly the first manned mission to Jupiter's moons? Space travel is incredibly physically demanding, not to mention unpredictable and_ dangerous _!" he had shouted around the piece of fudge he'd just shoved into his mouth._

_Takashi's eyes narrowed, "You think I can't?"_

_"I think you shouldn't. You're too smart to be a pilot. If you wanna study space, you should go somewhere with a good program, like UC Berkeley or Princeton or Purdue. Don't waste your talent--"_

_"Flying a highly technical aircraft that requires expert knowledge of math and physics? Pilots and astronauts are intelligent people Adam, it's not a waste to want to be one. I think you're just scared of flying, Bones."_

_Adam snorted and shoved the box of fudge towards Takashi, loving the flush that had emerged beneath his high cheekbones. "One of us has to be sensible, Jim."_

_They grinned at each other and pretended to fight over who was going to take the biggest piece of fudge and Adam had felt so full, so vibrant. But that night, lying in his bed, all he could hear was the ambient noise of Takashi's hospital room, each beep from the heart monitor another second closer to the day when that happy heart wouldn't beat again._

Nearly six years later Adam wasn't ready to let go. 

He knew from day one that there was an end date rapidly approaching, every breakthrough pushing it further back, every breakdown pulling it closer, but he refused to back away. Adam met a gentle conversation about grief from his mothers with sixty pages of research about the benefits of a healthy diet, exercise, and a sense of community for the chronically ill. 

_"It's our duty as humans to love, to connect, even in the face of grief. To love is spit in the face of hopelessness!" he had shouted, fists clenched around his research, "Rabbi Kaplan told me that after those men attacked Mom at work. He said sometimes things seem so daunting that we forget our own humanity trying to protect ourselves. That the bravest thing we can do is to love, even when we're scared to do it because it keeps us human and humanity is a rare and precious state of being._

_"Takashi is_ special. _I don't know how to explain it. He. He wants to be a pilot and fly to Jupiter and he loves Star Trek and he's gonna teach me how to make strawberry mochi and he's so alone that it makes my chest ache. His dad is just, always working and I don't think he has a mom and I want him to be our family but--"_

_His voice had cracked then, tears spilling down his cheeks. Hannah took him into her warm arms, peppering kisses over his cheeks. Deborah had stood close, but made no move to touch him, instead she kneeled down, looking him directly in the eyes, her dark gaze serious._

_"Adam, you love this boy."_

_Hannah let out a quivery gasp, but Adam nodded, tucked into her chest._

_"He is going to die before you."_

_His heart pounded, roaring in his ears as he met his mother's gaze, his own dark eyes mirroring hers. "Then I plan to love him twice as fiercely."_

_It was then that Deborah had smiled and leaned forward to press a kiss to his forehead. "I'm fortunate to have such a wise and obstinate son."_

_Hannah laughed, "Our baby needs to be grounded if our other son is set on exploring the stars."_

There were further discussions, of course there were, about Adam's anger and anxiety, his fear of helplessness. How often he refused to care for himself when Takashi needed it more. But from that day on they were a family of four and not a single Weiss was truly ready to watch this boy they loved fade away.

Even on days when his illness was most obvious, nothing was quite as painful as this. 

Takashi was hooked up to a ventilator, IVs feeding three kinds of fluid into his arm. The steady beeping of the heart monitor, once a reminder of Adam's greatest fear, was now the only thing keeping him upright.

"The doctors aren't sure what happened. Kashi had been responding so well to the medication, but it's like his body just. Stopped." Hannah's voice is gentle, hands gentler still as they lead Adam to a chair beside Takashi's bed. He sits and immediately takes hold of his boyfriend's hand. It's cold, so he brings it to his mouth, blowing warm air over it before dropping a kiss to the back. 

It's proof that Adam's breathing, but there's a voice inside his head that's telling him that even hooked onto a ventilator like Takashi, he'd still be without air. 

"I'm gonna go call your mother, baby. I'll be right back." Hannah's voice is a distant whisper, the kiss she presses to the top of his head barely registers. Her footsteps echo on the edge of his perception. 

In her absence the room grows tight and loud, every tick of the clock rushing Adam, but to do what he couldn't say. Nurses shuffle and chatter in the hallway, monitors beep, and the ventilator lets out even whooshes of oxygen. It's too loud, it's too much, it's stealing the last bit of breath lodged in Adam's throat, so he scrambles out of the chair and eases himself into Takashi's bed, spooning behind his boyfriend, carefully wrapping his arms around his body without jostling his IVs.

Tucking his face into Takashi's neck, he places a kiss behind his ear and does the only thing he can to calm himself.

" _How do I get through one night without you, if I had to live without you, what kind of life would that be?_ " he sings, voice pitched low, eyes clenched tight, " _Oh I need you in my arms, need you to hold, you are my world, my heart, my soul. If you ever leave baby you would take away everything good in my life. And tell me now, how do I live without you?_ "

He sings until he can't anymore, until his voice is rough with tears, and nose stuffed. He's not breathing, he knows that somehow he's not breathing, but Takashi is, and that's the thought that keeps him whole as he drifts to sleep.

***

Adam wakes with a stiff back, curled up somewhere small, cold, and uncomfortable. Blinking sleepily, it takes him a few minutes to realize where he is.

The hospital. Takashi. _Takashi_.

He jolts up, falling off the small couch in the corner of the room. Deborah snorts into her coffee from her seat in the chair beside the bed. Hannah smiles at him, crossing the room to wrap him up in a strong hug. 

"Takashi--how, is? What--?" He's trying to say everything at once, tongue too heavy to keep up with his racing thoughts.

His mothers laugh in unison, the deeper honeyed tones of Deborah's laughter mixing with Hannah's tinkling giggles and Adam is still too sleepy to be mad, but he's growing more confused by the minute.

"Sit down, Adam, we'll catch you up." Deborah's tone is warm, but leaves no room for compromise. There's also a surprising lack of tension behind the words, so he readies himself to listen, captured by the dissonance he feels.

He plops back onto the couch, wrapping himself in the thin hospital blanket he had been covered with at some point. 

"The doctors have come to understand what caused Takashi's collapse. It appears his medical device has been misfiring. It was transmitting as if it had been releasing medication, but nothing was being released into his bloodstream. A new device is being delivered shortly and will be implanted this evening."

"So, is he...is he going to be okay? I mean, how long was it malfunctioning? That's gotta have some repercussions."

Hannah sits down beside him, wrapping an arm around his shoulder. "We don't know, darling. It was misfiring for a few weeks, most likely. He gets monthly refills for his bracelet, so this was probably the result of a couple weeks worth of missed doses combined with the physical stress Kashi puts on his body. We'll be here for him though. All through his recovery, whatever that looks like for him."

Adam nods, feeling lightheaded. Takashi's body wasn't rejecting the medication. He was going to live yet. He was going to live.

Looking over at the bed he noted that Takashi was now off the ventilator, a small cannula affixed below his nose instead. An additional IV had been added to his collection, presumably a high dosage of his medication. Despite it all, Takashi was going to live.

Adam lets out a gasping breath. 

***

"So, I heard that you were takin' advantage of me during my coma."

Adam's head whips up from his position kneeling at Takashi's feet, assisting his still weak boyfriend with tying his shoelaces. "What?!? What are you talking about?"

Takashi's grin is sun-bright, stunning Adam with its warmth. There are dark rings below Takashi's eyes and his cheeks are still a little more sunken in than Adam is happy about, but behind it all is a beating heart, pumping blood throughout this beautiful body that Adam would give anything to keep whole.

"One of the nurses told me that while I was comatose a handsome man crawled into my bed and sang to me, so unless you were renting out my bed for gig space, I assume she was talking about you."

Adam scowls, finishing off the laces and brushing himself off as he stands. "It wasn't a coma, you were purposefully sedated. And I. It wasn't-- there wasn't anything nefarious I was trying to do--"

"Babe, it's fine," Takashi's eyes soften, playful teasing melting into something warmer, "I love it when you sing to me. Or when you sing in general."

He gestures to Adam to step closer, then pulls him between his legs from his perch on the edge of the bed. Instinctively, Adam drops his forehead to Takashi's and the two share air for a quiet moment.

"I love _you_."

The words are barely more than a whisper across his lips, but they fill Adam's lungs, a rescue breath or a million, breathing life into a body that's been dead the past two weeks. It's not the first time they've said those words to each other, but it never fails to feel like a blessing. 

He loves this man, is _loved_ by this man. People expect it to be difficult, to love like this, but it never has been. It's been painful at times--being unable to truly share a burden always is--but even on the nights when Takashi, adjusting to a new dose of medication, would lay on the Weiss' bathroom floor, nauseous and crying, it was always so simple to kneel down and lay beside him. Their needs were the same--to know the other felt safe, to feel safe and home themself. Hannah fretted more than once about their codependency, but it never felt like that to them. One could survive without the other, but oh why would they want to?

Adam loves Takashi, plans to spend every moment they have left together, which is why he shelves his own fear to present the love of his life with this offering.

"Takashi, baby. I have something to ask and something to confess."

Takashi pulls back, eyes meeting Adam's and he looks weary. Adam drops a kiss on his forehead, wraps his arms loosely around Takashi's neck. 

"It's not bad, I promise."

Takashi's hands find Adam's waist. He bites his lip, whispers, "Okay."

"You still plan on attending the Galaxy Garrison, right? Even after this?"

"Yes. _Especially_ after this. Look, I know you don--"

He cuts him off with a quick kiss, followed by another, longer one. One soft press of lips, one soft press of lips, but with a hint of tongue. He presses three rapid kisses to the right side of Takashi's mouth, mirrors his actions on the left. Takashi pulls him closer yet as Adam catches him open mouthed and their kisses become urgent. 

He pulls away after a few moments, panting, inhaling as much of his boyfriend as he can, Takashi looking disheveled and confused.

"Adam w--"

"I'm going to the Galaxy Garrison."

There's a beat of silence as the information is absorbed and then--

"What, Adam? What about Princeton? You can't pass that up to..."

"To what?" he laughs, and he feels manic, heart and mind racing as he plots out the many ways this conversation could go, "To be with the man I love? What a hardship. What would I even do at an Ivy League school? The students are probably even more pretentious than I am and I'd get through one day tops before I started punching people. Besides, aren't you the one who's always telling me how brainy you have to be to go to Pilot School, which is for Pilots?"

"That's not what the Garrison-- Adam, you rejected _Yale_ when your Princeton acceptance letter came in. You can't give that up for me."

He takes a breath, then another. 

"Takashi, I'm not giving anything up for you. You're going to the Garrison to live your dream, I'm going to the Garrison to live mine." At his boyfriend's confused look he laughs, "I get to see you live your dream while also learning a new trade and, if I'm lucky, getting a TA position in the Philosophy Department."

There's a prolonged silence and it's all Adam can do not to squirm in Takashi's grip. 

Without warning he is yanked into Takashi's lap and they fall backwards onto the hospital bed, Adam draped over his chest. One of Takashi's strong arms squeezes him tight around the waist, while the other grips the back of his hair, pressing their foreheads together. 

"I love you so damn much," he whispers, chest heaving with emotion. "I didn't know how I was gonna survive with you across the country from me and it never occurred to me that of course you were never gonna let that happen. Adam. _Adam._ "

"I will never love anyone else the way I love you," he says, and they both know what he means. However long they have together, that's it for them. It's not a choice on Adam's part, it's a truth. Maybe Hannah's right, maybe it is codependence. What it isn't, is a tragedy. Their love is a gift, a blessing.

He kisses Takashi and it feels like breathing.

**Author's Note:**

> This was unbeta'd and I will cry if I have to look at it again so if there are any obvious mistakes, I'll find them eventually.


End file.
